


The Universe Stamps

by GhostPatches



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bittesweet, Crossover Pairings, Distance, Emotional Hurt, M/M, Old work, Re-upload, Time Passage, space dogs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 05:42:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17037755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostPatches/pseuds/GhostPatches
Summary: Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart confused. Absence leaves pain. Adam has to learn to adjust.





	The Universe Stamps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whiskeyandspite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/gifts).



The address arrives tucked inside an envelope.

On the envelope, in top left corner, is the same address.

But the envelope has seen a better time in its life. There are creases, and some of the ink has been smeared. Stains fall on the edges, and one corner is ripped. It has come a long way.

It’s addressed to Adam and only to him. 

He holds the small piece of paper, turns it over, peers at the experience it has collected. His father is standing off in the kitchen, observing, leaving words behind. Adam opens the envelope and slides the slip of paper out. 

He reads the address and at the bottom of the paper is scrawled “Nigel”. His brows furrow.

“I don’t understand,” he says. Adam looks to his father, the distance between them laying bare. He holds the letter up an inch more. 

“It’s Nigel’s address,” his father says. 

“But this is his address,” Adam replies. His father smooths a hand over a pocket and shuffles over. He takes the paper from Adam, scanning it. 

“This,” he tells Adam, “is for sending things to.”

“Why would I send it if I can just give it to him?” Adam’s voice twists, tightens. 

There’s a sigh and his father is moving away. “You know why.”

 

The address is smashed into a corner of Adam’s desk, inside of a drawer, towards the back. He does not want to look at it. He sits in the chair and gazes out at Nigel’s room across from his own. Everything has been left how it was. It’s been a month since he leaned up close to Nigel’s face, breathed the same air he did.

He waits. He watches the front door. He listens at night for footsteps. He checks the coat closet for Nigel’s beat up jacket with the star patch he’d glued on it. 

Each time, something inside of him begins to pull downward, sinking. 

 

A month later he finds the address while searching for color coded paper clips. He uncrumples the paper and lays it on his desk. He traces the hand writing, smooths his thumb over Nigel’s name. 

A piece of lined paper is retrieved and a pen along with it. 

_I’ve had to do the dishes for you. I don’t think I should have to do them. Your room is going to get dirty soon._

_I found something in the park I want to show you when you come home. Are you staying with a friend?_

_When are you coming home?_

The letter is sealed up, then sent off.

Once more, Adam waits. 

He waits a month. Two months. 

Nothing is addressed to him. 

The weighted feeling is back and he feels it all the way past his stomach, into his knees. 

 

It is in the winter that Adam’s gaze falls back upon the letter. He is fifteen now. He looks up the address on his computer. It isn’t in America. 

“Have you written anymore letters to Nigel?” his father asks over breakfast.

“No,” Adam says.

“Why not?” He is being gazed at from over thin metal rims. 

Adam finishes scooting his scrambled eggs into a small, neat rounded pile. “I don’t like letters.”

“Hm.” The gaze turns away. 

 

His father suggests boxing up whatever things have been left behind. Adam slams Nigel’s door and locks it. Nigel will want his things in place. Adam always got yelled at for moving his things.

He sits on Nigel’s bed, tucks ups his legs.

He stays there for hours. 

When he returns to his room, he sees the address on the corner of his desk. He walks over and slams a hand down on it, crushing it into the wood grain. It sticks to his hand when he lifts it. 

The next day he sits down again.

_Dad wants to move your stuff. I told him you wouldn’t like it. I don’t know when you’re coming back but you should come back soon._

_There’s a spider living somewhere in your room. I’ve seen it twice now. It moves very slow._

_You’re going to have spider webs soon._

Like before, he packs this letter up and sends it to the address. 

Like before, nothing returns. 

He sits in his doorway and stares at Nigel’s room. 

That night he sleeps in Nigel’s bed. 

 

He is sixteen and it’s spring. The room across from him is empty. The address is tacked to a bulletin board, but the mailbox hasn’t seen a letter since his fifteenth year. He doesn’t know what to write. He doesn’t know what Nigel is doing.

But he does know something.

Nigel is staying where he went. 

Adam spends his time studying the map he has created out of the wall opposite his window. He has mapped the night sky, drawn constellations. Sometimes, when he is sitting in the dark, a flashlight in his hand, illuminating the crude night sky in his room, he remembers.

He remembers his hands pushing Nigel back, the other boy’s back colliding with the wall. His weight rolls onto the balls of his feet and his lips are firmly pressed to Nigel’s. Their breath cannot mingle, it has stopped. 

He thinks maybe he did it, maybe he is the reason. 

On a Thursday, he sits down. 

_I’ve made my wall into a constellation map. Dad said I should have asked first, but I think it’s good how it is. You should see it._

_The woman across from us thinks there are mice in the building but I haven’t seen any. Dad says she’s just bored. I don’t see mice when I’m bored._

There’s a pause.

_I’m sorry if I made you mad._

The letter is sent off. 

Adam remembers the way Nigel shoved him after. 

 

There are no expectations now. Adam writes more, but he is sending words into a void, a place he cannot see. He does not know if they are read, or if Nigel keeps the address he sent him.

His father says that the address is a P.O. box. 

Adam doesn’t feel as if his bones are collapsing into one another. 

He doesn’t really feel anything about the letters now. 

 

He writes once a month, sometimes once every two months if he has nothing to say. His life is split into periods, before and after. Present and missing. His hand writing looks cleaner. 

In July it’s:

_The AC broke. Dad cursed a lot. I slept on the floor but it was still really warm._

In September it’s:

_I’ve been sent home from school twice. I don’t like it. Dad had to go to the school and have a conversation. I might have different classes._

In December it’s:

_It’s almost Christmas and the snow is where you hate it. I wonder if the snow has piled up where you are. Do you hate it?_

A lot of times, the letters end with, I’m sorry. 

 

He is eighteen. 

He hasn’t sent a letter in four months. Time is filled with applications to institutes of academia. He doesn’t think of Nigel directly. The man, as he would be now, isn’t an active pull anymore. Adam doesn’t stare into his room, he barely glances at it. 

But Nigel remains a presence, somewhere inside of his mind. He feels it when he looks out his window, when the moon is bright. He feels it when he sees a couple kiss. 

He is left alone for a night and his gaze falls upon the crinkled, smeared address. 

He picks up a pen.

_I’m going to college now. I will be. I’m smart everyone says. I’ll go to a nice college. You’d hate the campuses._

_I don’t want to go. It’s big. There’s a lot of students._

_Are you at a college?_

Adam doesn’t think he is. 

 

He is twenty. 

His father looks paler now days, slow in movements. Adam finds him leaning over the kitchen sink with eyes shut. It’s never a conversation over breakfast, or lunch, or dinner. 

Sometimes, he can feel his father’s gaze on his shoulders, trying to tuck him into a box, trying to shelter him from a storm that was born when he drew his first breath. 

His letters are less frequent, no more month or two month. It’s a yearly or bi-yearly occurrence. In the winter, he sits down, covered in the dark of the apartment. His father has long since gone to bed, looking as pale as the snow outside. 

Nigel is a thought when nights are clear and Adam can see stars dusted across the sky. If he closes his eyes, he can feel a fiery presence, rage contained in muscle, beside him. He can feel the folded annoyance, tucked far away inside, and he is almost convinced that if his fingers reach out, they’d brush frayed fabric. 

When his gaze is met with emptiness, he finds paper and talks. 

_There are raccoons in the park. At first there were only two, but now there’s babies. I don’t know if anyone else has noticed them. When I take a break from studying, I sit and watch them. I think they recognize me._

_I’m on break from college. I’ll graduate in two years._

_Dad is tired._

He lets the letter sit in his room, on his desk, folded, for a week.

And then it’s slipped into the mailbox. 

 

He is twenty-two. 

His father doesn’t leave the house anymore, only for appointments and Adam is the one who goes with him. He sits in a chair and listens to his father and doctors speak in low, mellow tones. This conversation not for him, not for his mind. 

He is graduating in a month. Graduating with honors, though he doesn’t understand why he should be noted for just knowing, for being curious. 

Adam eats meals alone frequently. His father is too tired to sit up, to bring a fork or spoon to his mouth. He instead goes to bed. 

In the silence, Adam feels like explaining, setting small glass boxes of memory near the void. He finds a note book and a pen with blue ink. 

_A girl moved into the apartment across from us. The old lady that lived there, the one that used to shake her finger at you, died two months ago._

_The girl talks to me sometimes. I don’t like it when I’m trying to read. She says we should get coffee. I’m not sure why she asked. We have coffee and I can make it when I want. Dad told me I should go._

He pauses, eyes tracing his writing, wondering what Nigel’s looked like. Was it rough, with a harsh press of pen to paper? Had it mellowed out and now flowed gently? Were his hands still calloused but warm?

A phantom weight tightens around his stomach and lungs. 

_Are you still mad at me?_

 

He is twenty-four. 

Not a letter has passed in the mailbox since he graduated college. His father spends all his time in bed and at the doctor’s. The mellow tones have turned to something decisive and accepted. Adam stands in the doorway to his father’s room at night, when he cannot sleep, and watches the unsteady breathing beneath the covers. 

Nigel is a season that has passed and never come back. His thoughts rarely turn to the man across the waters with a mailbox he might never check. In his mind, Adam see’s all his letters burned, lit with a cigar that hangs loosely from thin lips. 

In the fall, the day is dusted in fog and rain. The whisper has shuddered through the apartment and now, the only breath in the space is his own. He stands, in the afternoon, with a small group of people as they lower a wooden casket into the ground, an eternal rest. No more appointments, no more being too tired to sit up. 

He is alone, a single flame in field of darkness. 

When the chill has dragged itself under his coat, he leaves. 

 

His father left an envelope for him. It is identical to the one he received long ago. Inside is another slip of paper, only there are not letters, only numbers. He reads the number over, once, twice, and so on. He picks up his phone, thumb hovering over the dial pad.

A thread inside of him pulls tight and there is a needling pain in his chest.

He sets the phone on the dining room table and walks away.

 

The streetlights have lit themselves outside. 

Adam pulls a chair up to the window in the main room and sits there, lights shut off, and stares out into the dark expanse. The stars are no different from yesterday. His entire world has shifted, fallen into a place he cannot reach, and yet they are the same. 

He is torn between grabbing hold or screaming.

The halls creak as he paces, he opens all the doors, he pulls the curtains shut on every window. In his room, he hovers, then pushes everything on the surface of his desk off. A paper crinkles and he picks it up. It is worn, bearing holes from thumb tacks and creases from being crumpled and folded. 

He studies the letters and numbers, and turns it over. 

Adam wonders if the stars are the same across the water. He pads back down the hallway and picks his phone up from the table, reading the numbers off the paper he’d left beside the phone. 

Standing in the middle of the darkened room, covered in shadows, his thumb swipes over raised buttons.

And he dials.


End file.
